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The New Vodpod Facebook App

We’ve finally gotten around to re-building our Facebook app. Our new Facebook app is simple, elegant, and exactly the thing you’d want if you like to share videos on Facebook with your friends.

If you use Facebook, get it now! Details on how to install the new app are below, along with an overview of what has changed.

We first built a Facebook app two years ago, when the initial Facebook application platform was launched. We attempted to build as much of the core Vodpod functionality as possible into that first app. That approach proved hard to maintain and was overly complicated; as a result the Vodpod Facebook app was the poor step-sister in our family of publishing tools.

The new Vodpod Facebook does one thing, and it does it well — it puts a nice looking entry in your Facebook feed (video thumbnail, title and your comment) whenever you add a video to your Vodpod collection:

facebook_feed_item

If this is so simple, why is it so great? Because your friends will actually see when you’ve added a video, and they’ll be more likely to watch what you’re collecting. And, because Vodpod allows you to share your favorite videos with a click from more than 10,000 different sites, they’ll be able to see all your favorites (and not just the videos you like on YouTube or DailyMotion). Over the past week, I’ve noticed that my Facebook friends are watching — and commenting on — videos I add far more frequently than they did with our old application.

It’s just three quick steps to install. Go to your Vodpod home page, and under the “share and publish” menu on the right, click Facebook and then click the “Connect with Facebook” button at the top of the page.

You’ll see three quick screens asking you to give our new app various permissions in order to publish items to your Facebook feed.

The first screen asks you to allow access for the Vodpod Facebook app — just click the big blue “Allow Access” button:

fbook_allow_access

The second screen asks for permission for “Offline Access” — which means we can publish to your Facebook page even when you’re not logged in and using Facebook. Click “allow offline access.”

fbook_allow_offline_access

The final step asks is a simple permission to allow us to publish content to your feed — click “Allow Publishing”:

fbook_allow_publishing

We’ll take you to your Vodpod account page to confirm the application is installed — you should see a screen that looks like this:

facebook_integration_vodpod

That’s it, with those quick steps the Vodpod Facebook app is installed. Next time you add a video to your Vodpod collection, you’re Facebook friends will see it in their feed.

Filed under: FAQs, News, Publishing Tools

Using the Vodpod Organizer to Publish a Set of Videos

Our Organizer is a really powerful tool if you want to quickly curate a set of videos to publish to a widget, VodSpot, or a video site powered by our API.

From your Vodpod home page, click the “organize your videos” link. This will bring up the organizer:

organizer

You can then use the organizer to quickly assemble a set of videos from your collection. Just shift + click to select the videos you want (or use search to refine your list first). Once you have selected the videos you want, you can then give them a specific tag (or tags), or move them into a separate collection.

Then, just setup a widget based on those tags (or, create a VodSpot module that points to those tags).

Filed under: Basics, FAQs, For Your Blog, Publishing Tools, Tips, Tricks, Hacks

Collect Videos from 1000s of Sites

Vodpod is simply best way to collect and to keep track of your favorite videos on the web.

We have three powerful tools for collecting videos: a browser button; search; and a “blog importer” that automatically collects videos you post to your blog, share on Twitter, or favorite on YouTube.

You can collect videos from any site that offers Flash video and an embed code so enable sharing. Nearly 10,000 different sites at this point.

Once you’ve collected some videos, we make it easy to publish your collection anywhere you like. You’ll find widgets for your blog; applications for Facebook and Twitter; an API that lets you build most anything you’d like; a variety of RSS feeds, including ones so you can watch your collection on Boxee; and finally a simple, fun way to build your own video site, called Vodspot.

Filed under: Basics, Collecting Tools, FAQs, Welcome

The “Save to Vodpod” or “Post to WordPress” Button Isn’t Working

Vodpod members have collected videos from over 4000 different sites using our browser button without a hitch.

But on some sites, because of the way they provide embed codes, our “Save to Vodpod” browser (or “Post to WordPress” version) can’t grab the embed code for the video you want to collect. Or, it might grab the wrong video.

Don’t panic if this happens! There is an easy workaround. You can usually copy the embed code from the site that provides the video, and paste it into the window.

When button can’t grab the video embed code, you’ll see a window that looks like this:

(Or, if it grabs the wrong video or another object, click the “video missing” link to bring up this form.)

Find and then copy the embed code for the video you’re trying to add, and paste it into the the form. The screenshot below shows what the form looks like with the embed code pasted in:

Then click the “preview” link to make sure you’ve gotten the right video:

Click to preview the video, to make sure it’s working fine. If it is, you should be all set to save the video to Vodpod, or to post it to your blog. Write your comment or blog post, add some tags, and hit the “Save” button!

If this doesn’t work, you can always send feedback to us: feedback@vodpod.com.

Also, if you’re using our toolbar bookmarklet and not our browser extension, upgrade now. The browser extension is far more powerful, and can grab embed codes from more sites.

Filed under: Collecting Tools, FAQs, News, Tips, Tricks, Hacks

Important Things You Should Read

If you’ve joined (or are thinking of joining) our community here at Vodpod, we’d encourage you to read the following:

Community Guidelines

Member Agreement

Privacy Policy

Filed under: Basics, FAQs, Welcome

Can I search for videos for my Pod?

Yes.

At the top of every Vodpod page is a search box. You can search for both videos and Pods (the default is set to videos, just click on the “Pods” link above the search box to search for Pods).

When you enter your search query, you’ll get results from Vodpod (i.e., videos that our members have collected on their pods) as well as YouTube, Google, Myspace, Daily Motion and Comedy Central:

Search Results

Just click on the thumbnails or titles of the videos you want to watch, or that you think you might want to add to your Pod. Results from YouTube, Google, Myspace, Daily Motion and Comedy Central will play in a pop-up window that looks like this:

Search Popup

You can watch the video in the pop-up window, and click the add button to put it in your Pod.

From the popup window, you can also select the Pod you want to save it to (if you have more than one Pod); add a title, comments and tags; and add a reaction, too, if you are feeling ambitious.

Filed under: Basics, Collecting Tools, FAQs, Tips, Tricks, Hacks

Overview: How to Add Videos on Vodpod

Vodpod provides three great tools for collecting videos from around the Web: a browser button (bookmarklet); search; and an automatic importer that works with your blog or YouTube account.

The best way to collect videos from thousands of sites is with our bookmarklet or our orange Vodpod browser button, shown here next (it’s the orange button!):

FF_extension_2

It  allows you to add videos from 1000s of sites around the web with just a click. You can also use this button to post videos directly to your blog, or favorite social network (Facebook, Myspace, etc.) or bookmarking service (Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us). You can learn about it here.

Vodpod Search is another great, easy way to add videos. When you search on Vodpod, we’ll show you results from the millions of videos collected by other Vodpod members. You can sort those results by date, relevance, or views.

search_results

Clicking on a result will take you to the video page; to add the video to your collection, just click the “Collect this video” link next to our orange logo under the video.

videopage_videoarea

If you don’t see the video you want among our Vodpod results, take a gander at the “web results” tab; you’ll  see videos from YouTube, Daily Motion, Google Video, Myspace and Comedy Central (for the Daily Show and Colbert Report among others) and dozens of other sites like Hulu not yet collected on Vodpod.

Finally, if you’re a blogger and already in the habit of posting videos directly to your blog, you can use our blog importer to automatically add those to your Vodpod.com collection.

Filed under: Basics, FAQs

VodTweet

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